Shakespeare: Enacting the Text

FAIN: FV-50181-08

University of Delaware (Newark, DE 19711-3651)
Leslie Reidel (Project Director: March 2008 to June 2008)
Leslie Reidel (Project Director: June 2008 to July 2010)

A five-week seminar for fifteen school teachers on Shakespeare and performance, to be conducted at the University of Delaware and in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

The seminar will focus upon the ways that literary and theatrical analysis of Shakespeare's plays can most usefully be combined. While The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet will be the primary texts studied in weeks 2-3, the first week will be spent on "Finding the Text," i.e. studying early printed versions of Shakespeare's plays, promptbooks, "subtext," and related topics, including sources and historical backgrounds. Videotapes of productions will be shown and analyzed and the last two weeks will be held in Stratford-upon-Avon, U.K., studying Royal Shakespeare Company productions, meeting with actors and other RSC personnel as well as members of the Shakespeare Centre staff and fellows of the Shakespeare Institute. A trip to London to see performances at the Globe Theatre and a visit to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. will also be included in the seminar.